Douglas Jackson: Caligula

But his words had as little effect on Aemilia as a bird's singing. She seemed to be frozen to the spot.

'Help her,' Cupido pleaded with Rufus. 'Get her away from here. I will buy you time.'

Rufus's mind reeled in confusion. He looked incredulously from Aemilia to Caligula and back again. She had tried to kill the Emperor they had come to save. To save him was now to condemn her, but not to save him was to condemn the thousands of innocents Narcissus believed would die in the civil war which would inevitably follow.

'Hurry.' Cupido's strong hand gripped his shoulder. 'You must get her away from here. Find Narcissus.'

Rufus nodded, but as he did so he heard the sound of a sword singing clear of its scabbard. They had forgotten the Emperor. He had reached forward and taken Cupido's weapon by the hilt.

'If you won't kill the bitch, I will,' he raged, bringing the long sword up so its point was feet from Aemilia's chest, poised for the thrust that would send the blade through her.

She stared back at him contemptuously and Rufus was reminded of a statue he had once seen of a doomed Galatian princess protecting her children from the vengeance of the legions, her stance and her expression a mix of defiance, courage and despair that shamed her attackers.

'Strike like the serpent you are,' she spat.

Caligula's bulging eyes filled with fire at the insult. His face twisted into a snarl and he screamed his hate as he rammed the blade towards her unprotected body.

Rufus did not see Cupido move. For an instant the gladiator was back in the arena making one of the effortless transitions through space and time that had kept him alive for four years in the most dangerous place on earth. In less than a heartbeat he was a human barrier between Caligula's sword and his sister, one hand stretched out directly in front of him towards the Emperor.

It appeared so harmless. Cupido's chest was protected by the wolf breastplate he wore, but the sword found the gap beneath his armpit with all of Caligula's strength behind it and vanished into the gladiator's body with as little resistance as if his flesh had been satin.

Cupido felt his head explode as the needle point ripped through his body. Strangely there was no pain, only the heart-stopping shock that froze a man when he dived into an ice-bound river. So this was it, he thought. This was what it had been like for all those other men he had faced, and fought, and killed. How many times had he woken sweating in the night, wondering? And now it was here. In the moments before his consciousness faded he realized with surprise that it was almost welcome. Strange that he should meet it so… objectively. Without fear. He listed the organs the long sword had pierced: lung, then heart, then lung again. Death.

Rufus saw his friend shudder as that terrible iron blade entered his body. Heard Aemilia's scream. For a second there was no Emperor before him, no ruler of Rome — only the enemy. He howled, a mindless wolf 's howl that filled the corridor with hate and fury and a lust for revenge. The sword in his hand sliced upward as if it had a life of its own, chopping Caligula's lower jaw almost in two and cutting through his cheek. The Emperor staggered back, a hand to his ruined face, but the other still held the long sword and in one movement he drew its bloody length from Cupido's body and the gladiator slumped to the floor as if it had taken his life force with it.

Rufus lunged forward, but a sideswiping slash of the long sword made him leap aside and the cut that should have disembowelled Caligula merely found the thick cloth of his toga. A horrible grunting noise, like a pig rooting for acorns, emerged from the Emperor's mouth, but the dreadful wound, even coupled with the one Aemilia had inflicted, didn't appear to have slowed him.

Caligula's sword flailed in a lethal half-circle but Rufus always managed to evade the edge, even if it was only by the width of a piece of parchment. Time and again he found himself in position for a killing stroke only for that vicious razor-streak of bright silver-blue to arc from the limit of his vision and force him to leap back as the blade that would have gutted him hissed inches from his belly.

He knew that the longer he fought, the more likely Caligula was to defeat him, but it was as if an army of ghosts stood at his back willing him onwards. Varro, Fronto, Quintillia and the countless other victims of this monstrous man whispered in his ear for justice and demanded vengeance. Vengeance. Cupido's face appeared before him and he heard a calm voice inside his head. In the next seconds his movements became more controlled, more subtle, the tip of his sword dancing in lightning strokes that dismayed and deceived his opponent. Suddenly it was the Emperor who was forced backwards and when he stumbled Rufus was on him, sword slashing for his exposed neck. Somehow, Caligula parried the blow and a muscular arm shot out like a cobra's strike and a hand with fingers of double-forged iron closed upon Rufus's throat. Now it was he who croaked and gurgled.

Frantically, he stabbed with his sword at any part of the Emperor he could reach, sometimes feeling the point pierce flesh, but never quite enough to inflict a serious wound. The iron grip tightened and his vision first blurred, then faded.

He was dying.

Caligula's arm, muscles bunched with the effort of killing him, was directly in front of Rufus's face. He had all but given up the fight. His mind was blank, but it seemed his body still contained some deepburied instinct for survival. The short sword stopped its hopeless stabbing and, seemingly of its own volition, very slowly and deliberately began to saw at the taut tendons of the Emperor's forearm. Caligula grunted at this new and unexpected assault and the insane light in his eyes was replaced by doubt.

Suddenly his grip slackened and the arm flopped and Rufus could breathe again. He felt his opponent's weight shift as Caligula reared back. The Emperor still had Cupido's long sword in his right hand and now he lifted it for one final killing blow. Rufus knew he would never be able to react quickly enough to parry the heavy blade, understood it must cleave his skull in two. Then a slight hand appeared from nowhere to grasp Caligula's wrist, making the Emperor half turn in surprise. Rufus saw his opportunity and with every ounce of his remaining strength he plunged the gladius under the Emperor's ribs and forced the point upwards and into his heart.

The ruler of a million Romans screamed in mortal agony and his face was etched with a look of horror. Rufus felt the moment his spirit fled from his body like water escaping a breached dam. The Emperor flopped down alongside him, twisting as he fell so that his lifeless eyes stared at the roof. Caligula was dead. He had lived twenty-eight years and ruled Rome for three years, ten months and eight days.

Rufus lay back, chest heaving, for what seemed an age, his eyes drawn to the clouds passing above the little window in the roof of the passageway that proved the unlikely truth: he was still alive. He tried to work out what he should do now, but it was as if his mind had been overwhelmed by the enormity of what had gone before. Each thought simply melted away before it formed any substance, like water draining through the fingers of a cupped hand.

'Rufus!' Aemilia's disembodied voice was urgent in his ear and somehow his sanity returned. He stared vacantly at her. 'Rufus, they're coming. If they find us here they will kill us.'

He heard the shouting voices and the clatter of armour. He was too tired think, but Aemilia was thinking for both of them.

'Help me,' she hissed. Cupido. Now he remembered. Cupido had been hurt. She was trying to drag her brother towards one of the curtained alcoves. He stood to help her, but his foot slipped and he looked down. The corridor was like a slaughterhouse. He realized his clothing was soaked in blood, and his arms and face, even his hair, were coated in it.